Using Listener with Threads

Question

Say I have an Object Foo that wants to get informed by several running instances of a Thread using a listener interface. E.g.

The interface:

public interface ThreadListener {
   public void onNewData(String blabla);
}

The class Foo:

public class Foo implements ThreadListener {
   public Foo() {
      FooThread th1 = new FooThread();
      FooThread th2 = new FooThread();
      ...

      th1.addListener(this);
      th2.addListener(this);
      ...

      th1.start();
      th2.start();
      ...
   }

   @Override
   public void onNewData(String blabla) {
     ...
   }
}

The Thread:

public FooThread extends Thread {
   private ThreadListener listener = null;

   public void addListener(ThreadListener listener) {
      this.listener = listener;
   }

   private void informListener() {
      if (listener != null) {
         listener.onNewData("Hello from " + this.getName());
      }
   }

   @Override
   public void run() {
     super.run();

     while(true) {
        informListener();
     }
   }
}

In the worst case onNewData(..) is invoked by several threads at the same time. What will happen with Foo? Is it going to crash or not?

Answer 1

• Your Foo class has no state (fields), so unless it uses external shared resources (e.g. files...) it is thread safe
• Starting thread from a constructor is generally a bad idea although in the case of a state-less object, I suppose it is fine
• if onNewData does not access shared data it will work as expected, if it does, the outcome will depend on how the method is implemented.